My grandmother was a grade school teacher (a strict one) and never let a learning opportunity pass. Earlier I was cleaning out the fish when I saw something that reminded me of one of my afternoons with my grandmother.

“Brian!” I called out. My son came with his earphones. “Yes mama?”

“Do you know what fish eggs look like inside a fish?” I opened a fish belly and showed the pale orange sac to him.

“Oooooh wow. That’s amazing,” he said looking close. “How do they hatch?”

“They don’t hatch like chickens. Fishes squeeze them through the anal opening here (shows it to him)~see how small they are? And some fishes scatter them. Others get attached to leaves and driftwood. The male fish fertilizes them after wards. The small fishes, or fry are born with yolk attached and as they grow the yolk and membrane gets smaller and smaller. There’s no hard shell.”

“OOooooh.” He looks at it a little closer. “So they shit them out.”

“Yup.” I went through the fishes to show him that some have the sac, some don’t and other fish parts.

I remembered how it was when my grandmother showed me the same things while cleaning the fishes too. I wonder if he will do the same with his kids. Perhaps next time I should teach him how to clean fishes [innards and all].